Breaking free from smartphone addiction: Defensive tactics against those tricky algorithms

Teenagers, older people, friends, family, colleagues… it doesn’t matter. They’re likely all glued to a screen. And it feels like we’re all tied to a sad, gray, infinite machine, completely disconnected from ourselves.

Now that the honeymoon with our phones is over, we’ve realized that we’re trapped by them. And that’s not going down well. “People are furious about the invasive and extractive behavior of Big Tech, because there’s no way to leave [your device] without leaving behind your relationships, your professional life, or your family life,” warns Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (2025), in an email conversation with EL PAÍS.

This anger stems from the lack of legal, commercial, economic and political restrictions on large companies in the tech sector, which allows them to “smother the digital space with tons of manipulation tactics, surveillance, fraud, disinformation, conspiracy theories and misogyny,” Doctorow argues. According to this expert in digital culture — who owns a phone that’s over five years old, uses Signal (one of the most secure methods for communicating with family and friends) and works with an open-source software system — the time has come to rein in the monstrous digital web woven by the tech giants: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft.

For years now, schools and families have been demanding that measures be taken against the digital law of the jungle and its sinister, addictive manipulations. And it seems like the time has finally come for “regulation, negotiation, awareness-raising and education that promotes critical analysis” of digital abuse, says Manuel Armayones, a professor of Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and a specialist in social media, who spoke with EL PAÍS on WhatsApp.

The Spanish government, for instance, has proposed a law that would prohibit minors under the age of 16 from accessing social media and criminalize the manipulation of algorithms. Other countries have already announced measures to restrict access for minors, such as France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Austria and Denmark, in addition to Australia, which passed its legislation last year.

Alongside these new regulations, more and more people are stepping back from hyperconnectivity, seeking to regain autonomy and freedom. They’re forging an alternative digital behavior. Some choose to keep their phones locked away at home, so that they can go for walks peacefully without them. On the subway or on the bus, signs of this practice are noticeable among some very young people, who choose not to use their phones on public transit (a digital paradox, given that this screen-free trend originated on TikTok).

There are other signs of this exodus: a 2025 study on social media by IAB Spain — a digital marketing association — indicates that 33% of users have dropped at least one social media network. The worst off is X, with a 28% abandonment rate, followed by Facebook (16%) and Pinterest (15%).

Against the constant barrage of direct messages, likes and texts, some people are swapping their smartphones for so-called “dumbphones.” Nokia dumbphones — those without internet access — are making a comeback. In 2024, The Wall Street Journal published a report titled Dumbphones and Fax Machines Are the New Boss Flex. The sub read: “Anyone with a chunk of change can buy the newest technology. Only a big shot can say ‘page me.’” According to CNN, these phones account for 15% of total sales and, while their main market is developing countries, manufacturers are designing niche and premium alternatives for those who want to be less dependent on their devices.

Beyond the phone, for Alba Lafarga — a member of Pantube, a collective of digital creators who proclaim that “another internet is possible” — one of the fruits of this new landscape is digital gardens. These are independent, flexible and privacy-conscious personal online spaces developed on platforms like Notion, Anytype, Joplin, or Obsidian. They’re free from endless scrolling and commercial pressure. “It’s a bit like the old Myspace or Tumblr,” Lafarga explains in a phone interview. These are digital landscapes that grow organically, where leisurely conversations take place and interests are shared, whether they be 19th-century anarchist readings, guacamole recipes, or collective micro-art projects. These kinds of initiatives seek to help users “reconnect with the people who matter,” Lafarga explains.

“I’d say that’s what many of us are looking at right now: how it can be done. How to find each other, without always having to go through a platform,” she adds.

Cognitive sovereignty

Far away from the obsession with virality, engagement and speed, search engines without intrusive algorithms are being developed, such as Kagi Search, DuckDuckGo and Brave Search. And open-source and decentralized networks — alternatives to the degradation of X — are also growing, like Bluesky and Mastodon.

There are more ways to combat the addiction to our phones, such as Appstinence, which was developed by Gabriela Nguyen, a U.S. student at Harvard University. Like a program used to break a toxic bond with alcohol or drugs, this app has five steps: decreasing, deactivating, deleting, downgrading and, finally, departing. “When you completely get rid of [your smart phone], you realize how much control it had over you,” Nguyen told Wired magazine.

Juan Ruocco — an essayist specializing in culture and technology — also perceives this desire to break free from our phones and their digital traps. In an article published on the 421 website — titled Low Tech, High Life — he argues that seeking alternatives isn’t about advocating for nostalgia. Rather, he notes, it’s so that we can have a future where we can choose “what to add, what to let go of and how much we want to depend on what we don’t control.” As he explains via videoconference, “it’s about evaluating our relationship with technology to reclaim our cognitive sovereignty.” That is, reflecting on our margin of control and management of our decisions, fighting for the power to choose what we do with our time, while also remembering that our best tool is free will.

Ruocco realized that he needed to fight for his own personal sovereignty when, one day, he saw that he had more than 200 passwords, and that almost everything he did was mediated by a platform. “That made me think, ‘how can this be?’” And so, he changed his behavior.

What Ruocco, Nguyen, Lafarga, Soler, Armayones and Doctorow are doing — and what countless other people, institutions and governments are doing — is confronting the dictatorial digital establishment. And we should keep a close eye on them.

In his novel Foundation (1951), the U.S. science fiction writer Isaac Asimov explains that, sometimes, a detour can drastically alter a path laid out by others (to whom nothing matters less than our well-being).

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